So on Memorial Day this girl I’m seeing and I decide to experiment with food (one of our favorite things to do it seems like) and came up with the idea to make our own chicken wings.
Not having ever done this before, we weren’t exactly sure what we were doing. One thing I wanted was for them to be hot. Really hot. Clear out my sinuses hot. I let her do her thing, and I experimented with mine. So when I threw together store-bought hot sauce with sour-cream, pinch of garlic, onions, more tobasco/louisiana hot sauce, a bit of merlot (it was just sitting there on the counter and I said “why not?”) I thought I had a great spicy combination.
The wings turned out great after soaking in the concoction I came up with, but they simply weren’t very hot coming out of the oven. Yes, the sour cream and merlot probably diluted things (I didn’t have any blue cheese), but the goupy goodness in which they sat in prior to cooking was really perfect.
Any ideas/ingredients (brand names) I could go with to get the hotness I so desire?
I don’t know what you were trying to do, but my hot wing sauce is simply Frank’s Red Hot Sauce and butter. If I’m alone, I might mix in a few drops of Dave’s Insanity Sauce to, as Emeril would say, kick things up a notch.
I suspect part of the problem is that the vinegar in the store-bought hot sauce (I assume that was its base - it is for most store-bought-hot-sauces) burned off during cooking, resulting in less “bite” and less sinus-clearing.
My suggestion would be to marinate in your concoction, then bake, then dress after cooking with a fresh batch of your hot concoction.
OR, you could go with the tried & true:
deep fry your wings, then dress immediately afterward with a mixture of Frank’s Red Hot & melted butter.
You need to fry wings. I use a combo of ~ 4+T of Texas Pete, 2 T butter and a pinch of garlic powder. The crispy skin soaks up the hot sauce mixture and they are quite good with beer, I’m told.
While everything tastes better deep fried, you can bake your wings. I like to lightly coat them with oil (Pam spray) and bake them at 400%, as I can do larger batches. That means no watching the frier and swapping out every 6 minutes or so.
Just remember, you heard Frank’s Red Hot Sauce first from me!
Frank’s Red Hot is the correct sauce to use for Chicken Wings. You can use other vinegary hot sauces, but Franks (formerly Durkee’s) has the signature “Buffalo” flavor.
I’m king of wings around here. Buffalonians have attested to my authenticness, so I feel I may impart some wisdom:
Start with good wings: they should be big, meaty, and fresh, not scrawny and dehydrated-looking.
Pat down the chicken wings with a paper towel or cloth before preparing to deep fry. Also, have them at room temperature (or close) before deep frying. This will help them cook more evenly.
Deep fry. I’ve had baked wings. I’ve had grilled wings. There is no substitute for deep fried wings. Marinated grilled wings are the second best. One of the best part of a chicken wing is the satisfying crunch as you bite into it.
Deep fry at the proper temperate (I shoot for around 375) and don’t crowd your deep frier or pot o’ oil (as I do it). If you crowd the frier too much, you’ll drop the temp of the oil too much and end up with soggy wings. Soggy is bad.
Deep fry to order. Don’t make several batches ahead of time and serve them all at once. Serve each batch as it comes out of the frier. The wings will be done when they look light-to-medium brown and crispy.
Put your drained chicken wings in a mixing bowl (or similar container) and toss them in a bit of your sauce, and serve with blue cheese, celery sticks and carrot sticks.
Oh, I guess you want to know how to make the sauce. For the sauce, use Frank’s Red Hot and margarine, NOT butter. This is the only time I ever use margarine in my cooking. It just makes the correct texture for the wing sauce, while butter does not. I start with 2 parts Frank’s to 1 part melted margarine and work from there. If you like them milder, use equal parts.
You don’t need anything more than Franks & margarine. However, I like to tart up my wings a little bit. To this, I add a teaspoon or three of Tobasco, a freshly crushed garlic clove or two, a teaspoon or two of yellow mustard, perhaps some cayenne, maybe some onion powder, occassionally some dried thyme, and honey. The last ingredient is one that was suggested by a Buffalonian friend of mine, and I must say that it does work well. It takes off some of the acidic edge of the vinegary hot sauce and it thickens up the sauce a little bit. If my sauce looks a bit on the thin side, I might add a teaspoon or two of a cornstarch slurry to thicken it up a bit, but I try to avoid this.
Deep fried wings. If anyone tells you to bake chicken wings, they are not to be trusted and should not be left alone in your house. Present company excepted.
Wing sauce:
Stick of butter
Big (not #10, but maybe 25 oz.?) can of crushed tomatoes
Some ketchup
Some white vinegar
Garlic powder
Big bottle of Franks hot sauce
Half a big bottle of Tabasco
Simmer over low heat until the butter melts, stirring often so the bottom doesn’t burn. You want more heat, add some Dave’s Insanity or even some dried crushed habenero (DO NOT rub your eyes for several weeks if you go this route. You have been warned.)
I find the wings take at least 18-23 minutes to crisp up nice, and fresh oil isn’t always the best. I have a fry-daddy type thing, and I usually make sure I have used oil in there (fresh oil that I made french fries, chicken nuggets, fish sticks, or something in previously). When the wings have reached desired crispiness, shake off the excess oil, and put them in a big metal bowl. Ladle some of the wing sauce over them and toss until all are coated.
Celery and carrot sticks, bleu cheese, and an ice cold High Life finish it off.
Nowt wrong with baked chicken wings - rubbed with garlic, salt and paprika and baked nice and slow so they brown evenly - you get all the lovely gooey/crunchy pan scrapings to play with too, after you’ve eaten them.
But then I never deep fry anything, so don’t listen to me.
Kitchen I used to work at when called for would make them:
Take the bag of wing segments out of the walk in freezer. 12 sections to an order.
Deep fry 12 minutes. At the same time, take a ‘tupperware’ bowl and lid, pop in the microwave with 2 tb margarine and nuke til melted. Add same amount of Franks hot sauce. IF they ordered nuclear, add some insanly hot sauce sauce [can’t remember the brand off hand, but it had no paper label on the bottle]
Wings come out at the 12 minute mark, onto a plate of paper towels. Top with anothe rcouple of chemwipes, gather both layers loosely in the hands and scrumble to blot most of the oil off, then pop into container, seal lid and shake. Dispense onto plate with a side of blue cheese dressing, celery sticks and a batch of napkins.
Damn I am getting hungry for wings and no margerine in the house…
By the way, Franks has bottled the wing sauce as it is normally made in Buffalo…
Those of us without benefit of a fryer or grill want to hear your cooking method. How much heat? And how, if at all, do you prepare the wings other than the rub?
And for those using fryers, what kind of oil/shortning is best? For wings and other treats (esp tator tots and homemade cheese sticks), I’ve been considering a new appliance purchase.
Does preferring my wings in fashions other than “Buffalo” make me a heathen or something? Because I find “Buffalo” wings abhorrent, but chicken wings with a BBQ or soy-sauce marinade are absolutely delicious.
It’s weird too because I usually like stuff really spicy… but I definitely like my chicken wings with a little less Buffalo.
No. Wings may be made in a whole variety of styles. I have no problem with BBQ wings, or teriyaki wings, or anything like that. What I do have a problem with is if I order “Buffalo wings” and get something smokey and barbeque-tasting to me (it’s happened to me several times before), or something breaded (!?), or something baked (!?), or something with tomatoes in it (!!??) Buffalo wings should also be sloppy as hell. Wings with sauce barely brushed on them are not Buffalo wings. They should attack you with their acidity and spiciness. They should be crispy and freshly made. This is why I *despise Buffalo Wild Wings. Because I am a forgiving person, I have been there four times, and every single time the wings were not crispy and fresh. They sucked. They were soggy. I don’t understand why people like the place. In the Chicago area, the only place for wings is Buffalo Joe’s in Evanston.
Sometimes I just rub them with a cut clove of garlic, sprinkle the other ingredients on and bake in single layer on a lightly-oiled roasting pan - other times I’ll dredge them in a mixture of flour, paprika, cumin, salt and herbs after rubbing them with the garlic - because they’re naturally quite greasy, the flour still forms a golden, crispy, batter-like coating this way.
I suppose I’m cooking them for a couple of hours at 130C (~250F) - this might seem too cool and too long, but faster baking seems to result in uneven browning and less tender meat - doing it my way, much more of the skin goes crispy and golden and the meat just falls off the bones.
I have used a deep-fat fryer precisely once in the last fifteen years - it was a wedding present - we used it once to make chips(=fries) and it scared the sht out of me - we followed the instructions precisely, yet the seething oil bubbled up to within half an inch of the top rim - it just looked like it was going to boil over at any second. Not worth the hassle. I prefer baked potato wedges anyway.
*cut medium-sized potatoes into eight wedges lengthways, put them in a large bowl and toss with some oil, then sprinkle on a mixture of flour and herbs and toss again, then a bit more of the flour mixture, and toss again - repeating until they are evenly coated - arrange them on a tray and bake alongside the chicken wings for about the last two-thirds of the cooking time - the flour traps a small amount of the oil all over the surface of the potato pieces, so that they are, in effect, frying anyway.
Here in sunny Buffalo, wings are being offered more and more different ways. It seems each resturant has their own style offered alongside the tried and true Franks/butter mix hot style you are all thinking of.
For the last three or four years they hold a big ass competition festival thingy where you can find wings cooked up a hundred of different flavors. Last year it was so popular they ran out of wings Saturday night and had to have a truck drive all night to be able to open Sunday morning.
As I keep reminding my neice whenever she comes to vist; Buffalo’s don’t have wings.
I do it differently than Mangetout. I season my wings with salt, pepper and Hungarian (hot) paprika, spray them down lightly with Pam or other oil spray, and put them in a very hot (400-425F oven). Turn over after 6-8 minutes. They still crisp up nicely that way. If I want a garlicy addition (and let’s face it, who doesn’t want garlic in everything they eat?), I’ll puree a clove or two of garlic, and toss it into the melting butter.
I usually use canola oil. Decent smoke point*, almost no flavor. Vegetable and corn oils also work well. Peanut oil has mild flavor, but a very high smoke point. Olive oil has too low a smoke point and too much flavor for frying, IMNSHO. Oil in a fryer can be reused several times, as long as it doesn’t smoke. I always strain my oil through 4-6 layers of cheesecloth after each use to remove impurities. I like an electric fryer because it controls temperature better than I can on a stovetop when I’m doing other things. I still use a frying thermometer to ensure the electric fryer is properly calibrated. Fry at 375 degrees in small batches. At that temperature, the outside of most foods will seal, keeping oil from soaking in. If your oil is too cool, oil will seep into the food and you’ll get greasy food. If your oil gets too hot, it goes bad and is no longer suitable for anything other than the neighbors up at 6am barking dog.**
*Smoke point is the point at which oil (…wait for it…) smokes. Once it smokes, it’s bad. You want an oil with a smoke point of at least 375F. Peanut oil’s smoke point is up around or over 400 degrees, which makes it very good for frying large items like turkeys, because sticking stuff into oil drops the temperature. By having 400 degree oil, you can withstand about a 35 degree drop, yet still not have to worry about oil seeping into the food.
**For the humor-impaired, yes, that is a purely in jest. I wouldn’t go through the trouble of feeding the dog rancid oil nor scalding it with hot oil when I have a perfectly good chain saw in the shed.
As long as you’re using refined oils (you know them because they look pale, and are relatively flavorless, as opposed to so-called “salad oils,” which are unrefined), you’re looking at a smoking point well into the 400s. Peanut oil’s smoke point is around 450. Safflower about the same. Corn oil usually a little less, sometimes a little more, depending on the type.
